The researchers, led by AT&T researcher Xiang Zhou, have perfected a technology that allows existing 100 gigabit-per-second fiber connections to be used to transmit over four times as much data. When used with a new low-loss optical fiber, they can sustain that data rate at distances over 7,500 miles. The new technology could dramatically increase the amount of bandwidth on the Internet's backbone, especially over submarine cables that connect the continents.

The transmission system developed by Xiang Zhou's team uses a new modulation technique that allows for the tuning of the signal to get the most out of available bandwidth. In the test data being presented next week, the researchers used a recirculating transmission test platform using 100-kilometer fiber cable segments to demonstrate that they could multiplex eight 495Gbps wave-division multiplexed signals with 100GHz of space between them over a distance over 12,000km (7,456.45 miles).

In a statement published by the organizers of OFC/NFOEC, Xiang Zhou said, "This result not only represents a reach increase by a factor of 2.5 for 100 GHz-spaced 400 G-class WDM systems, it also sets a new record for the product of spectral efficiency and distance.” A previous test by Zhou's team, using 50GHz spacing, was the previous record-holder for 400-gigabit transmission distance—at 3,000 kilometers.

The article doesn't make clear, but I believe this is for a single optical channel ("wavelength" in telco speak). An actual system built out of this technology would carry something like 64 to 80 channels on a single fiber. Also, a bunch of this bandwidth will be lost to Forward Error Correction. So figure 400 Gb/s x 80 = 32 Tb/s usable capacity on a fiber. That's about 3x the best commercial systems available today (100Gb/s x 100 channels).

So really we're talking 50,000 drives per night; that's probably a few truckloads.

While I wouldn't expect to see ~500 Gbs lines being rolled out to consumers anytime soon, it'd be nice to see some of that bandwidth trickle down to end users. That figure is roughly 10 million times faster than the service AT&T provides to my mother's residence. Yep, she is still on 56k dial up as that is the only services offered where she lives. DSL has been promised for her place by AT&T for over a decade now. There was even hope that Uverse fiber would make an appearance (which could be trivial to deploy as there are two high speed fiber lines running through her property with one end terminating less than a quarter mile where she lives). Yet she's stuck in the stone age of the internet on dial up due to AT&T's refusal to upgrade her area.

While I wouldn't expect to see ~500 Gbs lines being rolled out to consumers anytime soon, it'd be nice to see some of that bandwidth trickle down to end users. That figure is roughly 10 million times faster than the service AT&T provides to my mother's residence. Yep, she is still on 56k dial up as that is the only services offered where she lives. DSL has been promised for her place by AT&T for over a decade now. There was even hope that Uverse fiber would make an appearance (which could be trivial to deploy as there are two high speed fiber lines running through her property with one end terminating less than a quarter mile where she lives). Yet she's stuck in the stone age of the internet on dial up due to AT&T's refusal to upgrade her area.

That's the thing. There are a lot of people that would probably read your comment and think "bullshit...." but this is true. My mom and dad just recently got a DSL line. I kept giving my mom sh*t because she was still using AOL, up until I visited and found out that was all she really had access to! This is less than 45 miles from a major metro area too.

Then I see some of the bull that the telecoms are pulling and really get mad. Sorry, but by and large, we're being squeezed by them.

While I wouldn't expect to see ~500 Gbs lines being rolled out to consumers anytime soon, it'd be nice to see some of that bandwidth trickle down to end users. That figure is roughly 10 million times faster than the service AT&T provides to my mother's residence. Yep, she is still on 56k dial up as that is the only services offered where she lives. DSL has been promised for her place by AT&T for over a decade now. There was even hope that Uverse fiber would make an appearance (which could be trivial to deploy as there are two high speed fiber lines running through her property with one end terminating less than a quarter mile where she lives). Yet she's stuck in the stone age of the internet on dial up due to AT&T's refusal to upgrade her area.

Might be time to do some gardening and have an accident with the backhoe. Hey they might as well run a fiber to the house as long as there fixing the rest of them right?

Does this mean Australia may finally be able to enter professional online competitive gaming? Or will this not help with the latency?

There would be no improvement in latency. Light travels at a fairly standard speed through fibre optic cables (I wonder if there's a "light superconductive material" that works better at transmitting light than a vacuum?).

Does this mean Australia may finally be able to enter professional online competitive gaming? Or will this not help with the latency?

There would be no improvement in latency. Light travels at a fairly standard speed through fibre optic cables (I wonder if there's a "light superconductive material" that works better at transmitting light than a vacuum?).

Yes well, the laws of physics aside (see also: satellite), latency is just a function of congestion and route. A higher-bandwidth link or a more direct route could improve latency considerably. If a new line elsewhere relieves the link you use, that also can help. There are actually a few ways a new higher-bandwidth link could in fact improve latency between continents, even though the bandwidth itself isn't what primarily affects latency.

Does this mean Australia may finally be able to enter professional online competitive gaming? Or will this not help with the latency?

There would be no improvement in latency. Light travels at a fairly standard speed through fibre optic cables (I wonder if there's a "light superconductive material" that works better at transmitting light than a vacuum?).

Yes well, the laws of physics aside (see also: satellite), latency is just a function of congestion and route. A higher-bandwidth link or a more direct route could improve latency considerably. If a new line elsewhere relieves the link you use, that also can help. There are actually a few ways a new higher-bandwidth link could in fact improve latency between continents, even though the bandwidth itself isn't what primarily affects latency.

Actually, latency is directly related to bandwidth even when lines are not congested. Assuming no latency added for routing, except one store and forward, as bps goes up, latency must drop. Here's an example: assume your line speed is 100 bytes/s, then it takes you 15 seconds to receive a single Ethernet frame (typical Ethernet frame at typical MTU). For a round trip ping, latency would be 30 seconds!! Now say you have 100Mbytes/s, it will take .002 milliseconds round trip.

Obviously this is a trivial example and completely disregards all the store and forwards in each switch plus routing costs (processing) and any other types of packet inspection that might happen on the line along the way, but it does illustrate that the fact that light travels at the speed of light has zero to do with real world latency. It's all about the bitrate (frequency).

Does this mean Australia may finally be able to enter professional online competitive gaming? Or will this not help with the latency?

There would be no improvement in latency. Light travels at a fairly standard speed through fibre optic cables (I wonder if there's a "light superconductive material" that works better at transmitting light than a vacuum?).

Yes well, the laws of physics aside (see also: satellite), latency is just a function of congestion and route. A higher-bandwidth link or a more direct route could improve latency considerably. If a new line elsewhere relieves the link you use, that also can help. There are actually a few ways a new higher-bandwidth link could in fact improve latency between continents, even though the bandwidth itself isn't what primarily affects latency.

Actually, latency is directly related to bandwidth even when lines are not congested. Assuming no latency added for routing, except one store and forward, as bps goes up, latency must drop. Here's an example: assume your line speed is 100 bytes/s, then it takes you 15 seconds to receive a single Ethernet frame (typical Ethernet frame at typical MTU). For a round trip ping, latency would be 30 seconds!! Now say you have 100Mbytes/s, it will take .002 milliseconds round trip.

Obviously this is a trivial example and completely disregards all the store and forwards in each switch plus routing costs (processing) and any other types of packet inspection that might happen on the line along the way, but it does illustrate that the fact that light travels at the speed of light has zero to do with real world latency. It's all about the bitrate (frequency).

While I wouldn't expect to see ~500 Gbs lines being rolled out to consumers anytime soon, it'd be nice to see some of that bandwidth trickle down to end users. That figure is roughly 10 million times faster than the service AT&T provides to my mother's residence. Yep, she is still on 56k dial up as that is the only services offered where she lives. DSL has been promised for her place by AT&T for over a decade now. There was even hope that Uverse fiber would make an appearance (which could be trivial to deploy as there are two high speed fiber lines running through her property with one end terminating less than a quarter mile where she lives). Yet she's stuck in the stone age of the internet on dial up due to AT&T's refusal to upgrade her area.

That's the thing. There are a lot of people that would probably read your comment and think "bullshit...." but this is true. My mom and dad just recently got a DSL line. I kept giving my mom sh*t because she was still using AOL, up until I visited and found out that was all she really had access to! This is less than 45 miles from a major metro area too.

Then I see some of the bull that the telecoms are pulling and really get mad. Sorry, but by and large, we're being squeezed by them.

By "45 miles from a metro area" do you mean she is 45 miles outside the limits of suburbia or from downtown? That could be pretty remote. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to make everyone pay (through fees, taxes or rates) for wiring rural areas other than within small towns. There are decent satellite options now for outlying areas that are much faster than 56k modems and the latency shouldn't be too bad compared to modem either I'd guess though I'm not sure.

Does this mean Australia may finally be able to enter professional online competitive gaming? Or will this not help with the latency?

There would be no improvement in latency. Light travels at a fairly standard speed through fibre optic cables (I wonder if there's a "light superconductive material" that works better at transmitting light than a vacuum?).

Yes well, the laws of physics aside (see also: satellite), latency is just a function of congestion and route. A higher-bandwidth link or a more direct route could improve latency considerably. If a new line elsewhere relieves the link you use, that also can help. There are actually a few ways a new higher-bandwidth link could in fact improve latency between continents, even though the bandwidth itself isn't what primarily affects latency.

Actually, latency is directly related to bandwidth even when lines are not congested. Assuming no latency added for routing, except one store and forward, as bps goes up, latency must drop. Here's an example: assume your line speed is 100 bytes/s, then it takes you 15 seconds to receive a single Ethernet frame (typical Ethernet frame at typical MTU). For a round trip ping, latency would be 30 seconds!! Now say you have 100Mbytes/s, it will take .002 milliseconds round trip.

Obviously this is a trivial example and completely disregards all the store and forwards in each switch plus routing costs (processing) and any other types of packet inspection that might happen on the line along the way, but it does illustrate that the fact that light travels at the speed of light has zero to do with real world latency. It's all about the bitrate (frequency).

This is just not true. It doesn't matter how "good" your link is between point A and point B, you cannot send data faster than the speed of light, it is physically impossible. Once you take out all the other blockages and slow downs, the final arbiter is the speed of light. This is why there is a long delay in work done with the Mars rovers. It isn't a bandwidth issue (not trying to say they have lots of bandwidth), it is a latency issue because Mars is so far away.

The original question was in regards to gaming where the games send and receive data related to what is occurring in a multi-player match. If you are playing in a location that is remote from the server that your opponents are using, then you are at a disadvantage even if the bandwidth is equal for all parties. For example, let's say that your opponent moves 10 steps in a certain direction. Players that are geographically close to the server will receive this information before players that are geographically remote to the server. If you are far enough away from the server, you are at a disadvantage because you may not be able to see a game change and react to it before the change has negatively impacted you (as far as the server is concerned).

Obviously, this assumes that bandwidth is equal between all contenders and the only difference is distance to the server.

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.